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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton orders investigation of embassy attack

Similar studies in Tanzania, Kenya blamed Congress, administration

By Matthew Lee Associated Press

Posted:
10/03/2012 11:05:55 PM MDT

Updated:
10/03/2012 11:08:01 PM MDT

Click photo to enlarge

In this photo taken Oct. 3, 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the State Department in Washington. An independent panel appointed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is opening its inquiry into the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, amid demands from Congress for speedy answers to questions about the security of the mission and concerns that the FBI investigation into the incident has been delayed.

WASHINGTON -- Past investigations into attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions have blamed both the administration and Congress for failing to spend enough money to ensure that the overseas facilities were safe despite a clear rise in terror threats to American interests abroad.

An Associated Press examination of two reports that are easily accessible to the public -- those created after the devastating Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -- may offer clues to the possible outcome of the current investigation begun by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton into last month's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

That attack by what is now believed to be al-Qaida-linked militants has become fraught with election-year politics as Republicans accuse administration officials of dissembling in the early aftermath on what they knew about the perpetrators and for lax security at the diplomatic mission in a lawless part of post-revolution Libya.

Two House Republican leaders this week accused the administration of denying repeated requests for extra security at the Benghazi consulate, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

A five-member accountability review board appointed by Clinton will begin this week looking at whether security at the consulate was adequate and whether proper procedures were followed before, during and immediately after the attack.

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"The men and women who serve this country as diplomats deserve no less than a full and accurate accounting wherever that leads, and I am committed to seeking that for them," Clinton told reporters at the State Department on Wednesday.

Previous inquiries into attacks on diplomatic missions have taken months to complete, and two of them found fault with both the executive and legislative branches going back years and spanning both political parties.

"Over the course of this review, there will naturally be a number of statements made, some of which will be borne out and some of which will not," Clinton warned. "I caution everyone against seizing on any single statement or piece of information to draw a final conclusion."

The State Department has convened at least a dozen accountability review boards to look into the deaths of American personnel in attacks on official buildings or vehicles overseas since the mid-1990s. Those attacks were committed in countries that included Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Only the findings of the Kenya and Tanzania bombing investigations are easily accessible to public.

The two boards -- both chaired by a Republican-appointed former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. William J. Crowe -- were not set up by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright until November 1998 -- three months after the attacks. And they did not issue their final reports until January 1999.

Clinton stressed Wednesday that such an investigation "will take time" as Republicans have expressed impatience for full details before the Nov. 6 presidential election.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who plans to hold a hearing next week to question State Department officials about alleged security lapses, said he understood that the accountability review board's work was "critically important."

"It should not, however, be used by the State Department as an excuse for delaying efforts to address problems or answer specific questions," Issa said.

Clinton cautioned that the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, which will be led by another former Republican-appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, should not be rushed.

"I am asking the board to move as quickly as possible without sacrificing accuracy," she told reporters. "In the interim, we will provide as much accurate information to the Congress and the public."

The previous boards dealt with similar complaints and allegations of mismanagement and dereliction of duty that now surround the Benghazi attack.

In addition, like the board created for Benghazi at the height of a hotly contested presidential election campaign, the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam panels were convened at a moment of bitter partisan divide in Washington. In the fall of 1998, then-President Bill Clinton was dealing with the threat of impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

While drawing direct comparisons between the investigations is difficult, several broad themes are consistent, namely questions over unanswered or rejected requests for enhanced security and concerns about whether threat information was ignored or dismissed inappropriately.

The East Africa boards sifted through but ultimately rejected allegations that any specific government employee -- civilian or military -- had been negligent in addressing the threats or security of the embassies.

Instead, they were blistering in their criticism of government in general for failing to prioritize and invest money in improving security at U.S. diplomatic missions despite a clear rise in threats to American interests abroad and the widely publicized 1985 recommendations of the Inman Report on securing such facilities published two years after the bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.

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